


The Daemon Within

by lenaf007



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-26
Updated: 2012-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 03:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lenaf007/pseuds/lenaf007
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a long night of terrorizing Gothamites, Dr. Jonathan Crane's secluded shack is the scene of a dangerous confrontation. In the middle of night a large, hairy creature bursts through the walls and chases him through a hay field. Barely escaping with his life, Crane thinks he's quite fortunate. But is there more to this curse than meets the eye? Can Batman find and help Crane before it's too late? And who exactly is this Romulus fellow anyway?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Uninvited Guest

Chapter 1: An Uninvited Guest

 

This was by far his favorite hideout yet.  It was remote and located in the middle of a large hayfield.  The remoteness was simply a convenience really.  It meant his work was able to move forward without too much interference, either Bat related or otherwise.  The hayfield – well, that was just a nice accessory to his namesake.  Something about a dilapidated shack in the middle of a giant hayfield just made him giddy.  He made a path around the building before going in the front door; it was a habit of his to thoroughly check out the perimeter of each of his locations.  He couldn’t guess how many times he’d come across some pathetic robber or random homeless people trying to claim his property.  Honestly, didn’t they understand there was a pecking order in Gotham City?

 

Once he made certain the property was safe, he pushed open the wooden door.  The room was completely devoid of light thanks to the plywood planks he’d put up over the windows when he first moved in.  He wanted to be absolutely certain not to raise suspicion, even though it meant he’d have to fumble his way across the room whenever he returned from his late night exploits.  Familiarizing himself with the layout took some time, but after a few weeks he knew enough to no longer ram his knee into the corner table or trip over a box of chemicals; the worst part was scrambling around afterwards to verify all the toxic ones were safely sealed and upright.  Even a brilliant chemical mastermind was prone to occasional clumsiness. It was practically a physical requirement of the title.

 

He pulled the newspaper out that he’d shoved under his arm and dropped the crumpled thing onto his desk.  Well, it wasn’t exactly what <i> _he_ </i> would deem a desk, but he would have to pretend at least for a little longer.  The chair creaked as he sat down, mindless of his lithe build, and he fingered the dangling light switch for a moment before the green light from the lamp’s cover filled the tiny shack.  He’d stolen it from the University oh so long ago, but he still felt it added a certain sophistication to his otherwise dreary surroundings.

 

With a tug, the linen mask came off and he sighed appreciatively at feeling the cool night air against his damp face.  One of these days he was going to insert some type of cooling mechanism inside to prevent the trickles of sweat.  He laid the mask down next to the recently acquired newspaper, and then did a double take at the headline.

 

POLICE IDENTIFY BITE MARKS ON 3 VICTIMS

 

Crane arched an eyebrow, and flattened out the slightly damp paper to read the details.  Apparently there was some kind of wild creature out slaughtering Gothamites in the dead of night.  While typically he would completely endorse the latest mask to make his or her mark in Gotham, Crane did have his limits.  He examined the grainy black and white photos as best he could from the horrible printing, but the damage was a bit more than “bite marks.”  Unlike most cities, Gotham was known for playing down its vicious news instead of sensationalizing it.

 

He stretched and went over to his duffle bag to change clothes, but his mind was still ruminating over the pictures he’d seen. Crane had performed numerous autopsies during his time as a medical intern, and even these days he sometimes did them after exposing a victim to his latest batch of fear toxin.  The brain was always Crane’s examination goal, and the body itself was usually well intact.  These bodies however were gutted, the entire stomach cavity completely cleaned out, with parts of the intestines still hanging over the edges like a hurriedly opened gift.  The creature was doing more than biting its victims – he was eating them.

 

The ferocity of the damage really had him shaken though.  No insane dog or vicious cat could do that; and even bears and wolves weren’t that thorough.  No, the more Crane tried to pin the actions on an animal, the more he knew he was off track.  This was something with far greater intelligence than some hungry woodland creature.

 

Killer Croc was the next suspect that popped into his mind.  He was certainly prone to eating people, but he’d only eaten parts of his victims.  Much like the canines and felines that roamed the city, Croc would maybe gnaw on an arm or bite off a foot, but never purposeful evisceration.  He was a cannibal certainly, but Crane couldn’t recall him ever devouring the innards.  Perhaps a new mask then?  Gotham was certainly getting crowded.  He sighed dumping a cold bottle of water into his hands and rubbing down his face. It was a damnably hot evening.

 

He pulled out his rugged copy of Shirley Jackson’s <i> _The Haunting of Hill House_ </i> and dropped down into his sleeping bag.  He’d just finished the section where Eleanor spends a frightful night in the old abandoned house, which was coincidentally one of his favorite scenes from the book, when he heard a noise outside.  They were heavy sounds, several of them, as though something was walking across the dirt pathway in front of the shack.  Crane’s logical mind tried to stay cool as the images from the newspaper started springing unbidden to his mind.  Whatever it was, he finally decided, it was large enough to make noise as it stalked; therefore, it was probably large enough to react to fear toxin.

 

Crane closed the book and grabbed his canister off the nearby chest he used as a night stand.  He swallowed hard, forcing himself to focus.  Had someone followed him here?  He slipped the outfit on again over his bare shoulders, and shivered a bit as he pulled on the mask.  Not from the chill of the moisture within, but out of the anticipation.  It likely wasn’t the Bat – if he was here there’d be no way Crane would have been warned.  Meaning it was probably some intruder who had made a very bad decision to cut through this particular hay field.  With a click he turned out the light and creaked open the door.

 

The cool night air was refreshing and across from him was nothing except waves and waves of rolling hay beneath starry skies.  But he trusted his instincts.  He pulled back into a shadowy corner of the front porch and waited, his watchful eyes searching for any hint of the intruder.  Minutes passed, and the wind died down.  The hay field grew still, and in the distance the familiar sound of crickets and frogs were silent.  Crane waited, barely noticing his trembling hands and now questioning his instincts to return inside.  He could handle this.  He clutched his fingers around the compressed gas can as he waited.

 

The roar that broke the silence was not at all what he’d expected.  Something large had crashed into the back of his shack, near his sleeping bag was if he heard right.  His heart was pounding as grunts and snarls emerged from within.  Crane took a few steps away from the shack, knowing full well that he should run.  The creature was bashing around his room, knocking bottles and chemicals around in its wake.  Crane turned suddenly and started running; but upon moving at full speed, he heard the snarls subside from behind.  A pit in his belly formed as he realized that the thing had heard him.

 

He pushed his legs faster, splitting through the tall hay as quickly as he could.  From behind him he could hear the heavy trampling of the creature moving ever closer.  Crane leapt over an old decrepit fence and kept moving, not daring to look back.  A mere few paces behind, he heard a break in the creature’s gait: it had leapt the fence as well.  Only it took a lot longer for it to hit the ground and Crane began to realize that he wasn’t going to outrun this beast.  His lungs were burning and he knew his pace couldn’t last forever.  So he stopped suddenly, and turned hoping to catch the creature right in the face.

 

But as he spun around, his finger already depressing the trigger of the canister in his hand, the hairy beast’s head was far higher – not to mention closer – than he’d anticipated.  It pulled its arm down and shouldered him hard.  Crane flew through the air and hit the unsympathetic hay with a heavy thud, a burst of pain and heat firing up from his shoulder.  He didn’t have long.  The beast halted and he knew it was airborne; he turned his eyes toward the sky and saw the creature almost in slow motion, its large muscular shoulders covered in dark grey fur against the orange Harvest Moon above.  Its face was keenly wolfish and two clawed arms were outstretched towards him as murder weapon of choice.

 

Crane’s hand moved much faster than he remembered telling it to, but suddenly the gas canister was between them, dividing him from the falling wolf creature.  Its mouth was open wide, showing all two rows of pointed teeth, and Crane released the trigger.  A large puff of green gassy liquid filled the creature’s face, and half of the stream went straight into its mouth.  Crane smiled as the beast suddenly brought its arms up to its face in confusion, giving him just enough room to roll out of the way as the creature landed where he’d just been.

 

Pulling himself slowly to his hands and knees, Crane started crawling away from the beast.  It was hacking and whimpering behind him, and he smiled to himself. His fear toxin really was quite a wonderful invention.  Then a searing pain flashed up his left calf and Crane screamed against it, the tears stinging his eyes as the thing pulled him backwards.  He looked over his shoulder to see its jaw locked on his leg, the long streams of blood gushing out of the wound; the beast, though dazed, had dug both clawed hands into the earth to keep leverage.

 

Crane squeezed his eyes shut against the tears, and flung his arm over his shoulder, shooting another stream out into the beast’s gleaming yellow eyes.  It roared in shock, released its bite, and Crane was on his feet again running away as fast as his legs would carry him.  The roar behind him turned into blood curdling shrieks as the fear effect finally kicked in, and Crane wondered not for the first time tonight why he ever incorporated a delay in the fear gas.


	2. A Hellhole of a Hideout

Chapter 2: A Hellhole of a Hideout

 

By the time he reached one of his hideouts within the city, his left leg was killing him.  He’d managed one or two miles away from his secluded yet suddenly compromised shack, and he’d been lucky to find a long thin pipe he could use as a makeshift crutch while cutting through a construction site.  The entire experience had drained him.  It was bad enough that he’d had to rip off a piece of his costume to hastily bandage the wound, but the blood loss was now making him more lightheaded than he cared to admit.  As he pushed the heavy door closed behind him, he was already scouring the decrepit room for where he’d placed his medical kit. His mind felt foggy and it was difficult to focus.  He gave a longing look at the bed in the next room, still clean and made exactly as he’d left it, but the doctor in him knew that his poor condition would only lead to him bleeding out in his sleep. 

 

He stumbled across the room, putting most of his weight on the pipe as he opened closets and cabinets searching for the kit.  With each door he opened, his anxiety grew.  Had he moved it to his shack?  No, he made it a point to keep a medical kit in every hideout he kept.  He’d been in enough crossfire to know how likely a bullet wound was in Gotham. The bathroom, the kitchen, and what passed as a living room – all were bereft of it.  Finally, on a fleeting chance, he checked the laundry room.  To be honest, he always avoided that room.  Pieces of the ceiling were slowly separating from the drywall above, hanging like moldy bee hives from the constant moisture damage above.  The only time he went into the room was when he had laundry to do, and he always had to run it twice – once without clothes to get the mud out of the system, and finally the load to get his clothes clean. Some of his fellows might have reveled in the filth, but clean clothes were an absolute necessity to Crane.

 

He creaked the door open, placed his hand on the frame to steady himself, and reached a hand into the room to flip the switch to the hanging light bulb.  It flickered for a moment before deciding to stay on.  The stalagmites of peeling wall above had gotten longer and the dark stain had filled the entire ceiling.  Jesus, when had he been here last?  Certainly more than a month ago.  As he racked his bleary mind, the stench of the mold finally hit his nostrils, and he gagged involuntarily at the pungent odor.  The mold had definitely decided to claim the room.  He held his sleeve up to his nose, and finally spied the closed medical kit on the dryer.  He vaguely recalled having to patch up his arm after a spew of hot water had erupted from the washer, but sighed in annoyance with himself nonetheless.  He snatched the kit and made sure to close the door behind him.  This hideout was not going to work much longer: it had been condemned when he first entered it, but now it was a borderline hazard zone.

 

He hobbled over to the kitchen first; he’d need some fresh water to sterilize any of the instruments just to be safe.  The moldy room had made matters a bit more difficult.  He hadn’t thought of the consequences of leaving his medical kit there at the time, but now he berated his lack of forethought.  He turned on the pipes, listening curiously to the groaning as the water travelled through them.  The mud sputtered out first.  Crane knew better than to stand too close until clear hot water was coming out. He filled a bowl and then headed to the living room.

 

Carefully he lowered himself onto the couch, kicked off his shoes and started to work on the leg.  The bandages, he decided, were no longer usable.  He shuddered at the thought of putting the potentially moldy items near his oozing wound.  Yes, the blood was not coming out as profusely as before but it was still coming.  He’d probably agitated it with his walking, even with a makeshift crutch.  The wounds were deep but surprisingly not as bad as Crane had expected.  He pulled off his mask to get a better view of the wound and swabbed some alcohol around the edges, hissing against the pain. At least it kept him focused.  Next, he dipped a needle into the hot water and started stitching the wounds.  God, this was always the worst part.  When he was finally finished, he took a moment to catch his breath and wipe the sweat off his forehead.  He pushed himself to his feet and hobbled into the kitchen to pull out one of the bottles of water he’d stored there.  Knowing he needed the fluids, he downed half before making his way back to the couch and elevating his legs on the opposite arm.  He pushed some pillows under his head and finally allowed himself to drift to sleep.  What an exhausting evening!

 

\---

 

He was conducting his research: some victim in a suit was cowering at his feet, howling in agony.  Crane was crouched over him, his lips pulled back into a wide grin.  At least it felt like a grin.  He put his fingers up to his face and felt sharp teeth, his mouth much further forward on his face than it should be.  And suddenly his mouth was around the man’s belly, the teeth sinking in to the warm flesh and the screams of the suited subject reached a fever pitch before dying out completely.  The blood was hot and metallic in his throat.  Crane was screaming, willing his body to back off, to release his grip, but he could no longer control it.  And the blood kept flowing, pooling around them both.

 

\---

 

When he finally woke, the sun was high in the sky and shining into his eyes.  His head hurt and so did his right shoulder, recalling vague images of being knocked through the air and the beast lunging at him again.  His body was stiff, and pulling up into a sitting position was more difficult than he’d expected.  But at least he was alive.

 

He looked down at his hands and chest, half expecting them to be covered in blood, but thankfully none was to be found.  Wandering into the kitchen, he opened the fridge and tried to find something appetizing.  He kept nothing perishable, only canned and freezer food.  Finally, he chose a microwavable meal and popped it into the microwave – probably the most well-kept appliance within the shabby building.  Then he went back into the living room to turn on the radio.  He always kept it on the AM news channels – it was the only way he could get information in this hellhole of a hideout.  The food beeped that it was finished, and as he made his way back into the kitchen he realized that he wasn’t using his pipe crutch.  In fact he wasn’t hobbling at all.

 

He leaned down, pulling off the strips of clothing he’d used as bandages and viewed the blood crusted wound again.  He propped his leg over the kitchen sink and let some cool water fall over the wound.  No pain, not even a hint of discomfort.  Using the makeshift bandage he scrubbed at the wound until all he could see were the relatively clean stitches from last night.  The skin itself looked perfect.  The stitches were fresh, but the skin around them wasn’t even raw.  God, how long had he been sleeping?

 

He rushed back into the living room and turned the volume up on the radio, waiting for the date to be declared.  He shook his head slowly as the DJ confirmed that he’d only slept a single evening – how was it possible? Pulling out his food and digging into his mashed potatoes and chicken, Crane wondered what in the world he’d run into last night.  And what the hell it had done to him.


End file.
